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I installed Ubuntu 12.10 on the Lenovo S206 of my brother and already spent hours on trying to get the graphic driver to work.

No matter which solution I used, in the end Unity crashes, after the login I can see files on the desktop and also open folders and so on, but there is neither a window manager nor any sign of Unity (no panel on the top, no sidebar).

I used this instruction to install the driver and I also tried generating distribution-specific packages.

My Brother wants to go to France in two days, I hope you can help me out.

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3 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

I had the same issues but I finally found a way to use AMD drivers while keeping the Unity launcher working.

First in the terminal update your kernel with

   sudo apt-get install linux-headers-3.5.0-17-generic

Next go to the AMD website and download the 12.11 Beta drivers

Download the drivers and place the drive file (.run file) on the desktop

In the terminal run the following:

cd /home/yourname/Desktop (Replace yourname w/ your Ubuntu login username)

Followed by

sudo sh amd-driver-installer-catalyst-12.11-beta11-x86.x86_64.run

The AMD driver/catalyst installer should open, follow the step by step and restart!

Your unity bar should work while you have the latest drivers! WOo!

Also - to remove the watermark (For AMD testing only) simply open the terminal and run

sudo gedit /etc/ati/signature

Then replace "Unsigned" with 9777c589791007f4aeef06c922ad54a2:ae59f5b9572136d99fdd36f0109d358fa643f2bd4a2644d9efbb4fe91a9f6590a145:f612f0b01f2565cd9bd834f8119b309bae11a1ed4a2661c49fdf3fad11986cc4f641f1ba1f2265909a8e34ff1699309bf211a7eb4d7662cd9f8e3faf14986d92f646f1bc

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up vote 3 down vote

Ubuntu 12.10 doesn't support AMD/ATI drivers (called fglrx). If you install them, Unity, xserver won't work!

If using AMD/ATI GPU drivers: Run the following command to remove them, and reboot:

$sudo apt-get purge fglrx

Don't reinstall them as ATI cards (rather AMD Catalyst) currently don't support Unity-3D. Wait for AMD or Canonical or a PPA to release a patch that sets the things right.

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Thanks. Pretty demotivating... – leander Oct 25 '12 at 14:42
I'm sorry for the 'demotivating' part, @leander, but it's the truth. Sadly, I too had to uninstall my AMD drivers for the same reason. But, the open-source drivers do their job pretty well; most games run decently. Unless you (or your bro) aren't a hardcore gamer, you won't mind. – TomKat Oct 25 '12 at 14:51
If you're desperate, you may downgrade xserver; and fglrx should install (but give sub-optimal performance). I won't recommend it to anyone. – TomKat Oct 25 '12 at 14:52
up vote 2 down vote

The new AMD 12.11 beta drivers (released 2012.10.23) work with Ubuntu 12.10. However to install them you must first install linux-headers-generic. Hence:

    sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic

Slainte!

P.S. This script will get rid of the watermark.

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Thanks a lot, I will definitely try that when my brother is back! – leander Oct 29 '12 at 15:46

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